Lily Allen
Sheezus (Parlophone)
05/20
When visiting my old school a couple of years after my GCSEs, a year ten I didn’t recognise spotted me, saying “I know that face!”. As a moment, it has always stuck with me. We didn’t know each other. Maybe he had seen me in an assembly or perhaps we’d passed each other in a corridor, but we had never spoken. His familiarity was redundant. “I know that face!”. Yes, that’s literally all you know. As I began listening to Sheezus this moment came rushing back to me in Proustian fashion. Lily announces “I’m going in”, but as she climbs through the ropes and enters the ring, it becomes apparent how boxing only works if both opponents know the date, time and venue of the fight. “Ri Ri isn’t scared of Katy Perry’s roaring, Queen B’s gone back to the drawing”. Did you hear that Katy Perry? Rihanna? Queen B? Guess who I’ve got on the phone – it’s only LILY BLOODY ALLEN. Hello? Oh, it’s gone to voicemail.
It’s a shame, because Sheezus isn’t totally devoid of melodies, but as soon as anything borders on remotely enjoyable, the experience is suddenly and prematurely ruined by her terrible lyrics. It’s a feeling not unlike being caught masturbating. Just as things are looking up, Allen will drop some banal musing like “Did I ever tell you my uncle’s monkey ran away from the zoo?” No you didn’t tell us that. By the way, is the uncle in question Kevin Allen who directed Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London? The ninth track URL Badman probably serves best to sum up what has gone wrong here. With references to trolling and A$AP Rocky and Vice, this is another album in a string of recent efforts (see Childish Gambino and Jay Z) that have attempted to ‘engage’ with the millennial generation on such clumsy terms they sound like they’ve been written by Angela Rippen. It ends up sounding like a Whose Line is it Anyway? round called ‘songs based on hashtags’. Maybe naming the album Sheezus is the ultimate symbol of this misguided attempt at relevance. When Kanye released last year’s Yeezus it was brash, sure, but crucially it was also focused. In taking his name Lily Allen may have intended to turn Yeezy’s focus against him and his industry, to satirise him, or even to patronise him. But she didn’t, and more to the point, even if she had – he isn’t listening. There is no focus and there is no beef. It is all profoundly pointless.
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Words: Angus Harrison
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